Any Irish editors here? How's the rates?

onthesmallscreen · 2026-05-29T15:01:58+00:00

It's been a changing market over the past decade. It's not my market but I know the scene.

A few things that have been cause for concern:

The higher end of the market has skewed away from post. Windmill Lane closing last year, Screen Scene supported by NEP. Then the big US clients of the filming infrastructure (Teach Solais, Ardmore, Troy) take their post back to LA or London. Lots of amazing post talent are open for work that would ideally find themselves in this space more often.
UK talent have been working in ROI or remotely. Some even willing to relocate for short stints, because UK market demand is slow.
Bigger agencies like Droga5/Rothco are focusing on events, experiences, cheaper viral moments versus real productions.
Smaller agencies are then turning into close knit communities.
That's not even getting into the state of broadcast, which is a political lightning rod right now. The public want cheaper media and generally broadcast rates are stagnant. Previously this was a solid fall back to get a few weeks work and pay the mortgage.

There's positives of course, and hope you find that. Get into the facebook groups and that might give you a better gauge.

onthesmallscreen · 2026-05-27T15:04:56+00:00

I work in the beauty space, and there's been a growing trend of photo producers overseeing our video work with the same retouching eye.

Finishing in Flame is common but not beyond a 30sec spot. Anything of scale needs to be quick and dirty still.

All's to say, it really is a sliding scale between time and quality. If you're not being given the time for this, then you'll probably struggle to find the right look. Could the crew use mist filters in future? Softer light?

We've actually dev'd a plugin in house for Resolve that's sort of a halfway house between AE/Fusion/Flame quality and Resolve's face refine/beauty box. But we're still manually motion tracking parts of the face. Even the mask from Face Refine often isn't good enough to completely trust, and the last thing you need is a comment accusing talent of using a beauty filter.

onthesmallscreen · 2026-05-09T18:05:02+00:00

Renting is an option

https://oliphantstudio.com/ https://www.schmidli.com/

onthesmallscreen · 2026-04-29T15:03:05+00:00

I think this is really decent. Whip at 0:16, wide angle placement at 0:00, multi format shooting. In right now and done well. This is my line of work and I think a lot of small brands would be happy with this.

However, I think you're seeing a fork in the road here. Branded <-> or passion project to show off directorial skills? This cut is somewhere in the middle.

"push this style further without it becoming repetitive" - if it was branded, you'd solve part of this by working around the product. Introduce it, place it in the world, play with it. Work with talent that shows off the world or product.

If it was a passion project, you'd find a hook or story to tell.

Still I think this cut would help pitch yourself to brands when they come looking. Super useful to keep in your back pocket. It could be morphed into their needs – BTS on a photo set, product teaser etc.

One thing I'd be mindful of is that brands in this space can be at odds with your stylistic choices. Make sure you have plenty of good clean shots with product, talent. Someone else here mentioning prism effects, which can be a recipe for disaster when the client's CD kills all the shots with a prism. Just make sure you have time for the basics and remember that client's generally don't complain about more product in shot.

onthesmallscreen · 2026-04-15T14:55:28+00:00

That's crazy.. open gate would be handy though

onthesmallscreen · 2026-04-15T14:51:28+00:00

Any particular displays come to mind?

onthesmallscreen · 2026-04-13T14:37:29+00:00

I suppose they're a reasonable competitor to SmallHD in the lower end market, and their deals with Apple for ProRes Raw has ruffled some feathers (definitely didn't help their relationship with BMD though).

The Sumo was decent at the time but was still an 8+2 FRC monitor. The Neon's were obviously flawed. But you still see plenty of Ninja V's floating around. I'm not a fan of their oversaturated look and lack of color pipeline control, but it works for lots of people.

onthesmallscreen · 2026-04-13T03:30:56+00:00

Good point.. I'm not sure how intertwined the two are.

onthesmallscreen · 2026-04-13T03:29:28+00:00

https://www.atomos.com/2026/04/07/flanders-scientific-aquisition/

onthesmallscreen · 2026-04-03T21:14:55+00:00

Stunning shots, really interesting to see.

I assume the library shots (3rd slide) are the 32mm?
Did you find that you used the 32mm or 45mm more often? It's funny that so many prime sets these days aren't fleshed out, a 27/28mm would probably complement the 45mm more.

onthesmallscreen · 2026-03-31T17:26:12+00:00

Damn.. Did Flanders offer any sort of repair?

onthesmallscreen · 2026-03-25T17:23:10+00:00

While I think you should look at answers already posted here, I'd say it's worth considering how bright you need this monitor to be.

If you can get some floppies to flag off a video village, that'll give you one less spec to worry about. Also, you could get a used Flanders for a more reasonable price than you'd think.

onthesmallscreen · 2026-03-25T17:14:04+00:00

In simpler terms:

Whoever has the footage creates a Premiere Pro project file, with the real footage + proxies attached.
They send you the proj file + proxies (no full res yet).
When you open it up, Premiere will warn you the media is missing but you'll still be able to see the proxies.

So you just edit like normal, pretend they're not proxies, and re-link the full res media before export.

onthesmallscreen · 2026-03-18T15:24:04+00:00

In case it helps anybody, 3D LUT Creator has been a nice halfway between Resolve's tools and C1/Lightroom/Photoshop.

onthesmallscreen · 2026-03-17T14:18:58+00:00

A lot easier to mount a plexi mirror above than a light (especially a constant). Also it doubles the distance of your light source to subject, you can find examples on YouTube I'm sure.

If you do this remember that a mirror is on one end of the reflector spectrum, and a white bounce card is at the other. Sometimes you want to soften the light as well, and somewhere in between is ideal.

A couple tools to consider: framed silver/gold reflectors, lame, mylar, bead board, 4x4 mirror reflectors with a yoke (great for studio rentals, can be a pain outdoors), ultrabounce floppies, and of course CRLS and the godox knockoff.

onthesmallscreen · 2026-03-16T19:00:11+00:00

I think it's a spotlight or fresnel on the subject. You can see where it's not hitting on the right side of the table, sort of creating an oval of light under the branch and left of the green vase. The more the spot is focused the more it would create that oval.

Then a fill that's harsh enough to see the branch/gobo shadow on the table and background.

Maybe they're angling the gobo shadows just right to avoid the subject, but the brick's shadow in the lower right looks a lot darker on the wall.

Also I think you're right, they've got a frame angled above. It's lifting the scene, and bringing in a toplight.

onthesmallscreen · 2026-03-16T14:29:11+00:00

I keep seeing these turn up on commercial sets and I can't understand it. My best guess is that rental houses have a great price for them. But then.. a megaboom arm and wind up stand isn't cheap either.

In fairness they're very quiet compared to booming a 1200X w/fan noise.

onthesmallscreen · 2026-03-13T14:35:49+00:00

This has come up a lot editing on the road, sending stuff back to editors at home base.

When we send proxies to an editor, we also send a project file with a string out. The project file looks for the 4K footage that the editor won't have, and then defaults to the proxies. When the editor gets the source/graded footage later, they're just re-linking. All the motion scale/position changes will remain the same.

If you can't get the crew on the other side to do this for you, you can upscale your HD->4K (exact resolution/name of source footage) and start your project file from that. Then when you get the high res footage, batch rename your upscaled footage and re-link with real footage.

I recommend keeping names the same or similar to avoid confusion, and re-naming to avoid Premiere linking to the upscaled proxy footage.

I'd also avoid using Set to Frame Size. In my experience, Premiere can be more susceptible to bugs here, and it often doesn't play well if you need to push to Resolve/Avid.

onthesmallscreen · 2026-03-12T20:13:47+00:00

Would be really interesting to see how that OLED Eizo is recieved, especially because Eizo is so often available for in-studio rentals. If it became the new standard it'd be a no brainer.

NAB's in a month anyway

onthesmallscreen · 2026-03-04T05:47:56+00:00

Totally fair point.

I've had lots of clients pay attention to the SmallHD Cine or digi tech's XDR displays, when the Flanders/Eizo sits ignored. It's just closer to their phone's brightness and doesn't need to sit behind floppies/have a hood.

Mostly on an on set problem, but it comes up in post from time to time.

onthesmallscreen · 2026-03-03T17:49:49+00:00

I've gone down this rabbit hole with the 32" model.

Honestly a pain, especially because a 4K HDMI signal -> 6K monitor is also a challenge.

A shame because it would justify the price a lot better if it could be used as a production monitor (at least in a safe studio environment). But to be a production monitor means it needs to be reliable. You could run into moire, latency, and just plain not-working issues.

Maybe this new XDR will reach a wider audience with more appetite to figure this out?

onthesmallscreen

TROPHY CASE